1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an air traffic management and/or flight control arrangement for aircraft.
2. Description of Related Art
From the prior art, an air traffic management and/or flight control arrangement is known by the title Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) (compare the RTCA Do-260A standard of 10 Apr. 2003 “Minimum Operational Performance Standard for 1090 MHz Extended Squitter Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) and Traffic Information Services-Broadcast (TIS-B), Volume I (Main Part) and Volume II (Appendices)”). With ADS-B, an aircraft independently, that is to say without having been caused to do so from the outside, periodically transmits its identification, position, speed and flight direction and other information as a broadcast signal. For this purpose, at least one suitable transmitting station (a so-called Mode S Extended Squitter) is arranged in the aircraft. In addition, the aircraft has suitable computing means for determining, collecting, possibly preprocessing and editing the data to be transmitted in the aircraft for the transmission as broadcast signal. The broadcast signal is preferably repeated twice per second.
On the ground of the known ADS-B air traffic management and/or flight control arrangement, a plurality of receiving stations spaced apart from one another are arranged which can receive the broadcast signal of the Mode S Extended Squitters of the aircraft. The data and information contained in the broadcast signal are forwarded to an air traffic management and/or flight control center where they can be received, possibly processed and edited and then made available to users. The data of the individual aircraft, present in the air traffic management and/or flight control center can be utilized for air traffic management and/or flight control measures.
The position information of an aircraft originates from an arbitrary source for global navigation, such as, for example, from Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites, on board the aircraft. Naturally, other satellite-based positioning systems (e.g. GLONASS (Russian), Euteltracs (European, especially for long-distance traffic), Galileo (European), MTSAT (Japanese) or Compass (Chinese)) can also be used for determining the position of the aircraft.
The broadcast signal of an aircraft can also be received by other aircraft within range of the broadcast signal if they have a suitable receiving station. In each aircraft, flight information of other aircraft in the surroundings can thus be available which can be output to the pilot and used for avoiding collisions.
The ground-based ADS-B arrangement of air traffic management for indicating the flight movements in the airspace, known from the prior art, is however available only in the regions which have sufficient coverage with suitable receiving stations. Depending on the flying altitude (e.g. 10 000 meters) of the aircraft, the receiving stations arranged on the ground have a range of up to 400 kilometers along a virtual line of sight to the aircraft so that they can in each case cover an approximately circular receiving area having a diameter of up to 800 kilometers. To be able to provide ADS-B in large regions area-wide also for low flying altitudes, a multiplicity of ADS-B ground receiving stations are required. In addition, arranging ADS-B ground stations in inaccessible and remote terrain is expensive. Complete global surveillance with radar installations and/or ADS-B ground stations is impossible or impracticable especially in oceanic regions and/or in very remote and thinly settled regions (e.g. polar regions, Tierra del Fuego, etc.).
An aircraft flying, for example, from the Caribbean to Portugal leaves the range of current radar surveillance after only a few miles from the coast and is then only connected to the various air traffic managements by radio. It is only shortly before it reaches the Portuguese Azores that it is acquired again after a relatively long time by an air traffic management radar when it has entered e.g. the flight surveillance area of Portuguese air traffic management (NAV Portugal or FIR Lisboa).
In addition, a non-homogeneous air traffic management infrastructure between the well equipped airspaces (e.g. USA and Europe) and airspaces in which only procedural air traffic management (ATM) is possible results in a reduction of the ATM capacities also in the well equipped airspaces. This occurs since international aircraft must have priority before regional aircraft in flight control. The entry of one or more international aircraft into the surveillance area is only announced shortly before it is reached and has effects on at least a part of the regional air traffic. Planning of the flight control of the regional air traffic is not possible since it is not known when exactly international aircraft enter into the surveillance area of the air traffic management authority from non-radar or ADS-B-monitored regions (seas or oceans).